


Flint and Steel

by the merienes tranch (lilhalphys)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Possession
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 07:25:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14636937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilhalphys/pseuds/the%20merienes%20tranch
Summary: There's the Institute, and then the town, and then the forest.Aubrey Little lives in the forest, spends every day of her life working to protect it. On a retrieval mission already too classified for her liking, she stumbles across the remnants of a hidden Institute Strike Team mission and finds herself wrapped up in a decades-long conspiracy with another person's* soul in her body.*read: an intimidatingly hot person





	Flint and Steel

**Author's Note:**

> A few important things to note:
> 
> \- like. a lot of characters are gonna be in this. a lot. im gonna tag them as they show up, and Really minor characters arent gonna be in tags at all  
> \- this is super self indulgent. im gay about it. i wanted to put everyone in something and. i thought this was a fun way to connect the worlds of all four arcs  
> \- not gonna be a lot of commitment and dust npcs cause. i cant remember any of their names.  
> \- my augustus might be a bit ooc cause im writing him as a dick because Asshole Augustus is what we deserved

They say if you look out a window high enough in the Institute’s central tower, you can see where the forest ends. They say the trees thin out and give way to empty plains and then, eventually, the ocean. They’re wrong.

Lucretia knows that the Institute is so far from any major body of water that the tower would have to reach the sky for it to be visible, and the trees turn to mountains long before they fade to plains. And besides, she’s been to the top before.

You can’t even see the mountaintops from there.

She’s standing on a balcony about halfway up the tower, gazing over the other buildings on campus, past the decrepit town that surrounds them, into the sprawling woods and at the location where she knows sits, out of her current field of view, a dome made entirely out of glass.

Lucretia sighs, picking at the skin around the thick, black metal band that clings to her forearm, different tubes and needles extending from it and poking into her wrist.

“Bracer ache?” comes a voice from behind her, “You know, Dr. Miller’s booked for a while, but I could probably get you in with her son if it was too bad.”

If it were anybody else, she is sure she would have been startled, but it’s Irene Baker and her soothing voice that join Lucretia on the balcony. She’s the head of IR - either Internal Rights or Institute Rights, no one’s quite sure - and its common to joke that the whole department was named after her, for all she’s done for it.

So Lucretia smiles. “The moment I let him anywhere near the inside of my arm is the day I die. He’d probably give me an infection.”

She knows that Irene’s position doesn’t approve of petty, gossipy insults, but it’s very, very difficult not to hate Dr. Maureen Miller’s son. “Or lose all your medical paperwork.” Irene finishes walking across the balcony and joins Lucretia at the guardrail. She has a cup of coffee in each hand, and it takes a lot for Lucretia to not start sobbing in gratitude. Irene must notice - something in the way her brow relaxes and she says, “Extra cream, no sugar, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Lucretia says, more breath than voice as she accepts the paper cup. She throws some back, sighs as it hits her tongue. “God, Ms. Baker, how do you do it?”

“Please, I’m Irene off the clock.” She takes a swig of her own coffee, a small _clang_ echoing across the night air as she rests her own bracer-clad forearm on the metal rail.

They fall into a distant silence then, Lucretia’s eyes wandering back towards the people hidden glass dome as she absentmindedly drinks from her glass.

“You know,” Irene pries, and Lucretia feels rather than hears the corporate sympathy in her words, “It wasn’t your fault.”

“What do you know?” Lucretia asks her already half-empty cup.

"I’ve seen the mission records. You-”

“I killed her is what I did.” Lucretia all but slams her cup on the railing, tears pricking at her eyes as it all comes flooding back.

She feels Irene’s hand on her back. “No, you didn’t. Some shi-petty thief did.”

Lucretia takes another drink, her hands shaking.

Irene begins to gently rub her back, and Lucretia can feel the sobs start forming in her throat. “ Don’t beat yourself up about it, okay? If you want to blame anyone, blame-”

And she is cut off as, off in the distance, at the point to which Lucretia has spent the night pining, the world seems to explode. The noise rattles her even at such a distance - a great roaring that rings through the air like a thousand stormy oceans.

The sound is complemented by a radiant light - a steady, golden column of fire extending into the sky. Its glow spreads as far across the woods as Lucretia can see; some of the houses on the outskirts of town are even gently backlit.

And she can feel, both in the way her bracer begins to shudder and static and in her very soul, that this is some of the most powerful magic she’s ever seen.

Lucretia turns and sees her own awe mirrored in Irene’s face. “What was-”

But Lucretia has already turned on her heel, coffee forgotten, and run into the building. “Barry!” she shouts, frantically sprinting down the corridor to the floor’s research wing.

-

Errol pulls his cloak tighter around himself, covering as much of his bright red Institute uniform as he can. He’s confident that anyone in town would recognize him before they’d recognize his job, but he really isn’t in the mood to take a chance on invoking anyone’s ire tonight.

The skies are clear, and the only things outshining the moon are the flickering neon signs attached to the buildings around town. Some advertise businesses, others simply display humorous pop culture references and various simple images. The Institute’s central tower looms over it all, shrouding the other half of town in its shadow.

Errol takes a familiar turn off the main road into a network of alleyways. It’s dark but not frightening; he can hear jovial conversations through the thin walls of houses, and he isn’t the only one out. He passes by a woman he only recognizes as a local “business” owner. They wave at each other, and he doesn’t feel her take the pouch of gold out of the pocket in his cloak, only knows she’s done it because it happens nearly every time he comes out here. He’s quite sure she’s figured out by now that he only keeps anything in that pocket so she can have it.

Gandy’s repurposed mobile home is sitting where it always is on their scheduled meeting nights. He’s asked her how she keeps it so upgraded, and she’s said she “has her ways.”

The blue metal door is very clearly mismatched with the rest of the vehicle, but it’s very sturdy and has warding magic coming off it in waves. He doesn’t knock - knows from experience that you can lose a finger from that - but reaches into his pocket and presses the button on a little remote she gave him when this arrangement started.

Errol feels the magic weaken and hears footsteps approach the door. After a moment of muffled bickering, blue metal is replaced by Gandy’s disappointed face.

“You’re late, Errol,” she says.

“Yeah, sorry, I-”

She sneers. “I should just make you leave.”

There’s a barked, almost muffled laugh from behind her, and the tension melts from the air as her facade crumbles. “Just kidding, Errol,” she says as she turns on her heel and walks into her home.

Errol takes a moment to test the doorway with his claw, ensures that she didn’t forget to take down the warding spell, before following her in.

“Augustus is already here, so you know I could never make you leave.”

Errol laughs, hanging his cloak up on one of the many hooks and rods jutting precariously out into the living space. “What, he’d miss me?”

“Quite the opposite, Mr. Ryehouse,” comes Augustus’ voice from one of the mismatched empty chairs around Gandy’s table. “She can’t stand to be alone with me.”

Gandy’s up on a stepstool rummaging through her cupboards. “That’s not entirely incorrect, but…” She finds what she’s looking for, giggling as she pulls a small black box from the back of the shelf. “I _do_ need to here whatever Errol has to say, however late he is.”

She sits down at the table, and Errol tries to follow suit. He has to guess which seat Augustus isn’t in, and, as usual, he gets it wrong the first time, much to the joy of the others.

“You literally don’t have to do that. You have full control over whether I can see you.”

“I know,” says Augustus, “It’s just funny.”

“ _That’s_ the only agreeable thing he’s said all night!” Gandy laughs, and she opens the box, then, and pulls out a small pair of glasses which she balances on her nose with a practiced ease. “Now,” she says, leaning into Errol’s personal space with her elbows on the table and a grin splitting her face, “Tell me everything.”

Errol leans back in his chair with a sigh. This is their normal arrangement, much as he’d rather just, like, play cards or something. He doesn’t have any notes - Gandy forbade them, saying that if it isn’t important enough for him to remember, it isn’t important enough for her to know.

“I have another update on, uh, on Hallwinter’s new hires. He definitely picked them out himself - Dr. Highchurch didn’t even know that those positions had been formally reopened.”

Gandy’s grin melts away, replaced by a grimly serious expression, and she opens her mouth,

Before she can say a word, about seven different alarms start beeping and ringing from various parts of the trailer.

Gandy immediately gets to work checking the various dials and monitors about the room, and she promptly says “Oh, shit.”

“What is it?” Errol says as he rushes over to her. The machine she’s hunched over is emitting a low, consister whirr with the occasional cluster of short, high-pitched beeps.

“High magical-based potential energy. Something is,” she swallows and rebalances her glasses on her nose, “Something’s gonna blow.”

And right at that moment, Errol is fairly certain that the whole world collapses around him. The sound that fills his ears is like a thousand bombs going off, only it doesn’t get much quieter after the initial impact. It’s been a full minute by the time he’s got his hearing back, and Gandy’s already gone by then.

The whole room appears to be on fire; the few holes in the wall have thick columns of bright, orange light shining through them so brightly they almost look to be solid. And the magic. He can tell that he’s not anywhere near the source, but, damn, it’s still burning at his insides.

He breathes, deeply, in and out, and just has his bearings when Augustus pokes a spectral head through the back wall and says, “You almost certainly want to see this, Mr. Ryehouse.”

He’s right.

Errol steps outside and is acutely aware of how much warmer the air is, crackling with fiery energy and something beneath it, some other magical force that he can’t quite name. He walks behind the house to find Augustus and Gandy. The latter is bent over some equipment, cursing at it as it beeps, sputters, and smokes. Her glasses are balanced precariously on the top of her head, facing the giant column of fire in front of her.

“Oh, shit,” Errol says, “That’s a giant fucking column of fire.”

It’s impossibly tall, originating somewhere deep in the forest and extending into the sky so far that the top of it is imperceptible. It has a deep, vivid orange hue, rippling with flashes of scarlet and wisps of golden threads of light as it continues to rumble and roar.

“No shit!” Gandy yells over the sound as her machine finally gives out with a groan and shudder.

_

“Magic,” she says into the microphone, “is impossibly dangerous.”

The conference room is, if the attendance list is to be believed, almost exactly half full. For Dr. Nadiya Jones, that is a very good turn out.

She knows how dangerous her ideas are thought to be, how so very few people will associate with her for it. But she doesn’t need friends. Her work takes up enough of her time.

“But this does not mean that we should live in fear of it. The power of magic can be utilized by our organization to achieve our purpose.”

She presses a button on her remote, and the screen behind her lights up with an image of design plans for a complicated metal bracer that, Nadiya would bet, about a third of the people in the room currently sport.

“As I’m sure you all know, two and a half years ago, Dr. Maureen Miller designed this bracer. It inhibits the wearer’s magical ability and is used by the Institute to keep people safe from the potential volatile effects of magic.”

She jogs her notecards against the podium, relishing for a moment in the rapt attention of the crowd before her.

“This is a waste of potential. Note that I did not qualify that statement with ‘I think that’ or ‘I feel that’; this is not something that I feel. This is something that I know. The potential of magic - if we can control it - is limitless.”

And at that moment, several alarms signalling an uncontrolled burst of dangerous magic in the surrounding area go off, and the small crowd quickly evacuates the conference room.

-

“Barry, she's alive!”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i am not 100% certain how often this will update, but ill likely be able to get chapters out with some frequency as summer rolls around? maybe? i have a rough outline of this thing so far, which gives me hope for that.


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